When hedge fund honcho Ken Griffin closed on a $60 million condo at Faena House in Miami Beach last year, the deal shattered all residential price records in Miami-Dade County.
Now, a challenger has appeared.
William Duker, an investor and former attorney, just listed his tri-level penthouse at the Apogee South Beach for $65 million with Carlo Gambino of Douglas Elliman.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Duker’s condo has the potential to again break Miami-Dade’s price ceiling if it sells at full price.
A large art piece hangs from the unit’s living room wall
Boasting 270-degree views of the ocean from Apogee’s 22nd, 23rd and 24th floors, the five-bedroom unit is truly massive. It has 8,271 square feet of interior space, along with another 13,146 square feet split between balconies and a rooftop pool deck.
When factoring in about half of the unit’s outdoor space, as listing agent Gambino does, the asking price breaks down to $4,378 per square foot. That’s significantly cheaper than the $4,794 per square foot that Griffin paid at Faena House, though his unit’s square footage was more heavily weighted to interior space.
The penthouse has 270 degree views of the ocean, Government Cut and Miami Beach
Duker originally bought the triple-floor unit in 2008 during the financial crisis from Apogee’s developer Related Group for $16 million, according to county records.
Gambino said the unit was delivered raw with bare concrete floors. So, Duker spent the next five years building out the unit with a host of plush finishes like stone floors — which cost more than $1.2 million to install, a massive all-glass staircase in the living room, and furniture from Miami’s PH Design studio.
Work wrapped up in 2015, giving Duker little time to actually live in the unit. But Gambino said his client is a project-oriented person, and has already shifted his attention toward the next undertaking — sailing around the world in a new 270-foot yacht named Sybaris, which cost roughly 75 million euros.
“That’s the project he’s concentrating on right now,” Gambino said. “He enjoys the process more than anything.”
Duker is a former Manhattan lawyer who was sentenced to 33 months of prison time for overbilling the FDIC in 1997 — a controversy that led to his disbarment. According to published reports, he went on to co-found Amici, an electronic document discovery company that catered to litigators. It was bought out by Xerox as part of an all-cash $174 million deal in 2006.
But while Duker is looking toward a future of smooth sailing, his listing in Miami has come at a choppy time for the luxury market. Griffin, one of his unit’s competitors, listed the two uncombined Faena House units for a total of $73 million earlier this year and has yet to sell them.
Gambino admitted it won’t be an easy task to find a buyer.
“Of course, everybody knows there maybe are a handful of possible buyers in the world that would consider something like this,” he said. “At that level, if somebody wants the best apartment in Miami or south of New York City, this is it.”
Check out a video walkthrough of the unit below: